


Rattling Good History

by windfallswest



Series: Love or War [9]
Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, New Warriors, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Character(s) of Color, Indian Character, Inhumans (Marvel), M/M, Mutants, Porn With Plot, Time Travel, did you know that 'that boulder from Indiana Jones' has its own tag?, relationship shrapnel, this is a psa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:20:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5127383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfallswest/pseuds/windfallswest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I thought you told me your exes <i>weren't</i> psychotic." </p><p>With special guest-stars the Amazing X-Men!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rattling Good History

**Author's Note:**

> I have decided that fandom at large does not always take full advantage of how flexible spider-powers make a person.

It started out as a rare quiet day on the mountain, but quiet days were rare for a reason. Vance was sitting in one of the labs (everything in Wundagore seemed to be some kind of lab, even the gym) and ostensibly reading an article on the New York Times website. The more they explored the computers, the more access they discovered the High Evolutionary had, to all sorts of things, ranging from things you usually had to pay for to things that were supposed to be secure. Vance felt a little guilty about taking advantage, although he wasn't one hundred per cent certain Wyndam hadn't actually been paying for it all and he'd notified the dozen or so governments to the holes in their systems. 

Mark had recently discovered a Netflix account that worked even when the mountain was all the way in Europe, elevating him to the status of a miracle-worker. Right now, he was a few consoles away, but he was only watching one of those reality cooking shows. Disappointed, Vance turned back to his reading. Mark had also gotten them all hooked on K-dramas. Vance didn't know him well enough yet to say if that had been a favour or some indirect form of revenge for everything that had happened to him lately.

Vance attributed the unexpected respite to the fact that they'd dropped Aracely off in Houston last night and Faira had left for a swim before he got back this morning. That kept down the drama— _and, okay, my blood pressure_ —but her avoiding him and Robbie except on missions wasn't workable in the long run. They were at an impasse on the search for Namorita: Faira didn't know much about the surface world, and she didn't seem to have any real leads. _And she's still refusing to cooperate with us._

Not that Vance was bursting with ideas of his own. She looked, sounded, _moved_ like Namorita; he and Sil and Robbie all agreed. Using the High Evolutionary's equipment, they could tell in five minutes if her DNA was a match. Considering the sorts of things that happened to superheroes, amnesia barely even moved the needle. If her skin had turned from pink to blue, her hair could easily turn from blonde to black.

Faira, of course, flat-out refused testing; and Vance had to respect her decision. He didn't like it, but he wasn't going to run anything without consent. Genetic testing might not even be conclusive if the new look, powers, and identity were the result of the same sort of transformation that had turned Namorita into Kymaera, he admitted glumly to himself. _There's some connexion there; there_ has _to be_. It was frustrating to all of them to know that and not be able to use it somehow. An actual, concrete test would tell them _something_ , even if it came up negative.

There were other, more mundane matters to deal with, too. Vance had mostly been leaving Mark to Selah and Robbie, except to pry them off his back when he started looking overloaded. Robbie was an excellent distraction, almost as good as a smart, pretty girl. 

Mark had obviously been a quiet guy even before his life had violently ejected him, though, so Vance figured at least one of them should take the hands-off approach. He remembered how much it had helped him, having the Crash Pad to go to when what he needed was just to not be alone. Thrash had been good for that, companionship without a lot of emotional demands. 

Vance rewound to examine that comparison. Thrash he wasn't, and at the least he hoped he was more approachable. 

He snuck another look at Mark. Keeping it low-key seemed to be working. Mark had actually come to _him_ to talk a few times now. Superficially, he was doing better. He'd stopped talking about his family, though, and anytime anyone suggested he try and make contact again, he tended to shut down. _And by anyone, I mean Selah._ The number of estranged families on this team was just depressing. 

Selah. Selah had potential, but she needed seasoning. Same with Sam, if he ever got his helmet fixed; but being thrown into the deep end alone had sobered him up a lot. Selah didn't really understand tragedy, and Vance wished this was a line of work where she wouldn't end up taking the crash course. 

That left Kaine and Aracely. Aracely was making progress with her telepathy; Vance had been spending a lot of time with her lately, trying to develop training that worked. Granted, he didn't have a lot of experience with telepaths, but her powers struck him as odd. That things like gods, gruesome psychedelic visions, and the phrase _probably because of the voice in my head_ kept recurring in their conversations might have had something to do with forming that impression.

Kaine...was a different matter. Two different matters? There was the team, and then there was the relationship. As long as Vance was evaluating team members, Kaine's obvious competence and field experience had to be weighed against his attitude. He was practical and he thought critically: both good things. Critics kept you honest. And Kaine had a gift for not getting bogged down in the typical hero/villain patterns and cutting through to the essentials. 

The ways he chose to react on that basis, though, were...not always great. Excessively violent. And he was obviously not used to working in a group or under any sort of direction. Maybe that explained the hint of a hesitation Vance had started picking up during fights; but he had a feeling it had more to do with the internal battle Kaine was fighting, the one between who he had been and who he was trying to be. He didn't like talking about it; the only context in which he'd ever mentioned it had been when he'd tried to warn Vance off. What Spider-Man had told him in Manhattan had shed a little light, but mostly it had just raised more questions, questions that didn't look like they were going to be answered anytime soon.

It was a fine line to walk, although sometimes it felt more like a point he was balancing on. Holding together the team and a relationship when half of them didn't live within a thousand miles of each other, everyone had commitments, and a lot of them had issues. Part of what had gone wrong with him and Suzie was that, never being in the same place at the same time, they'd just lost touch. Vance wasn't going to let that happen with Kaine. 

Taking the mountain down to visit always felt like overkill, except making the two-and-a-half-hour flight with Aracely in tow was a mistake he had only had to make once. Years of acclimating to Robbie's conversational style had inured him to that kind of verbal barrage; but aside from still being pretty basic with her telepathic control, she didn't have a very good grasp of what was inappropriate. The aggressive innocence made Vance even less eager to discuss the his love life with her, especially given he and Kaine were barely managing to.

So Mount Wundagore was becoming a regular sight in Trinity Bay. Kaine had the city, Aracely had friends, Vance had Kaine, and Faira liked the water better. Robbie claimed he hadn't had any trouble in Houston, but that was still something Vance worried about. It definitely wasn't the easiest place for Mark to be. 

Vance had spent the night with Kaine, mostly not crime-fighting. Houston was way less high-maintenance than New York. A frankly ridiculous television had joined the sparse furnishings in Kaine's two-room apartment, although apparently an air-conditioner would impede access to the windows too much. 

A few weeks ago, Vance had talked Kaine into going furniture shopping with him, on the grounds that he'd been partially responsible for breaking the old sofa; or, perhaps more persuasively, because telekinesis was even more useful for delivering furniture than fighting super-villains. They'd gone after dark to cut down on the chances of someone seeing them take to the air from the alley out back of the store and flown right to the roof of Kaine's building. The rest of the evening had been spent stress-testing.

Last night they had made it to the bed. Eventually. Vance shifted in his seat and tried not to get distracted. He might wish he were reading the day's news in the sweltering heat of Kaine's apartment, but that didn't mean he would actually be more productive there. Crowding Kaine was as good a way to ruin what they were building as neglecting him, and there _was_ something there, something worth waiting for and working for. 

To think, Vance had been afraid they were moving too fast. He now found himself ironically on the other end of the romantic spectrum from where he'd been with Angel, speaking of balance. Vance snorted at himself and made an attempt to refocus. He was just getting into a piece about immigration when Jake Waffles' voice came over the intercom.

"Justice."

Vance sighed and looked up. "I've told you, you can call me Vance," he said.

"Justice, you have a call. Do you know a woman calling herself Timeslip?"

 _That_ was a name he hadn't heard in a long time. 

"I'm on my way up." Vance cocked his head at Mark, who had paused his video to listen to the exchange. "Wanna come check it out?"

They flew through the corridors to the control room. Vance kept high so he could put on speed without worrying about who else might be walking around. Robbie stuck his tongue out at them as they blew past and changed course to jog after. He was only a few seconds behind as Vance and Mark landed next to Jake Waffles at the main controls.

"Rina?"

"Told you I'd call you back," said a distantly familiar voice.

"Rina, it's Justice. How did you get this number?" 

"You're going to give it to me in about two hours."

Mark looked confused. Robbie smacked his forehead. "Time-girl, right."

"You need to come to Oregon; I just sent you some coordinates where it's safe to park your crazy mountain."

"What's going on?" Vance asked. 

"My cousin and his friend; they've got new powers and they're in trouble. Someone's after them, and I'm too far away. You have to find East and West before they do."

"What's East and West?"

"It's what Gotam and Julianne call each other. Because they're both Indian, but American Indian and Subcontinent Indian. East and West," Rina explained. "What? Only white people are allowed to be offensive now?"

Robbie made a face. "Gotham? Really?"

Rina sighed impatiently. "His parents are dorks. Will you hurry? I don't have much time. I've left a note telling myself to call the X-Men, too, but I don't know if I'll have a chance before—" She broke off.

"—myself if you're about to ditch me. Shit; I hate it when that happens," Rina said in an entirely different tone.

"Rina?" Vance asked. _She's doing the time thing again, isn't she?_

"Hold on, someone else is trying to call me. Um, whoever you are, I'll call you back; I really have to take this."

She hung up. Vance, Robbie, Mark, and Jake stood staring at each other in silence.

"Well, that was totally messed up enough to be legit," Robbie decided after a long moment.

"Start calling everyone in. Jake Waffles, you got the coordinates she was talking about?" Vance asked.

"Yes; they seem to be consistent."

"Do me a favour and write them down for me; I might need them later. Is Faira back yet?"

"I will call her in," Jake Waffles promised.

Mark and Robbie were already paging the New York contingent. That left Houston to him.

Vance punched Kaine's latest number on his phone. It changed every other week on average. Vance wasn't sure if this was more of Kaine staying off the grid or if with their lifestyle it was just easier to replace tracfones. Everything had a touchscreen anyway nowadays.

"Aren't you gone yet?"

Vance smiled because he apparently found Kaine's complete lack of manners endearing. He had been on this team for _way_ too long. "Something's come up."

 

Gotam looked at his watch, then around the park. It was a nice enough day, sure—warm and actually clear, with people walking their dogs and their children, office-workers taking advantage of the opportunity to enjoy real daylight, and other students wandering through—but Gotam had a Work of Brilliant Statuary that needed to be glazed. If he didn't get it into the kiln tonight, he might as well hand in a dripping lump of clay for his final grade.

Sucking absently on his labret piercing, he texted Julianne again; no answer. He was probably going to have grass-stains on his pants from sitting here. If that e-mail had been Corey punking him again...

"Psst!"

Gotam looked back up.

"Psst!"

Someone was in the bushes across from him. Gotam leaned forward and squinted at the rustling leaves. "...West? Is that you? What are you doing in there?"

Julianne's head popped out from the foliage to glare at him. Her hair was loose, which was unusual, and messy, which was not. "Get over here!"

"I am not—"

"East!"

Exhaling loudly, Gotam clambered to his feet and crossed the path to the ornamental shrubbery. Julianne looked even more dishevelled than usual, which might have had something to do with her lurking back here like a puppy-snatcher. Strands of wavy brown hair were sticking to her sweaty face.

"You know, if you wanted to be sneaky, you could have just texted me back," Gotam told her. Defeated by Julianne's forceful gesturing, he reluctantly sat down beside her on the damp ground. "I should make you do my laundry."

"I bricked my phone."

"That sucks, but you can probably get it fixed. You don't need to crawl around on the ground, punishing yourself."

Gotam looked at his friend more closely. Julianne's dark eyes were wild, and he could tell even through the natural hue of her skin that the blood had drained from her face. Something was really wrong; he didn't think he'd ever seen her so upset. 

"Seriously, are you okay? Do you want me to call someone? Because my phone still works."

"No, I mean I _literally_ bricked it." 

Julianne reached into her bag and pulled out—whoa. Gotam reached to take it, but she shied away.

"I touched it. I touched it, and now it's a brick," Julianne said in a rush. "That mist last night; I woke up in a cocoon. That's the new thing, right?"

 _Oh my god._ "Are you sure?"

Without looking, Julianne stuck her hand into the bag again and came up with a pencil. It wasn't even all the way out before it started changing. 

This was all going way too fast. Gotam felt his heart hammering in his chest, his mind spinning like a hamster on a wheel, and if he could just _slow it down_ before he had an aneurism—was this what an aneurism felt like? Was he having a panic attack?

As he stared, waiting for blood vessels to explode in his brain, the translucence running up towards the tooth marks on the end of the pencil slowed to a standstill. It looked like cut crystal, or what glass would look like if it could run like water. 

Gotam yanked his transfixed gaze up to Julianne's face, but there was no reaction. She had stalled in mid-motion, an expression of concentration and panic frozen on her face. No statue had ever been this still, because it had never moved.

_West isn't doing this._

Gotam looked around frantically. Leaves rustled. People walked by. He could catch glimpses of cars zooming past on the road.

"Nonononono," Gotam said, fumbling his own phone around. "Stop! Start! Stop! Something!"

It took him four tries to unlock the screen. _Please tell me I have super-cousin's number in here._

"West! West! Move, damn it." 

Gotam tried not to hyperventilate. He felt like there was a cramp in his brain, and suddenly Julianne was moving again just like she'd never stopped. The pencil was as transparent as the dismembered husk of a bic pen. 

Gotam's gurgle of pain and sudden change of position caught her attention. She looked like she was about to say something, but instead her eyes veered off over his shoulder and her hands flew to her mouth. Gotam lurched halfway to stopping her, but she arrested the motion just in time.

"East, behind you!"

Gotam jerked his head around to see a squirrel hanging in mid-air, halfway through a leap onto a tree. "Holy crap. I-I think that's me. Unless you think it's you?"

"We _both_ have superpowers?"

They stared at each other. 

"What do we do?" Julianne asked.

Gotam remembered his phone and started tapping. "My cousin is a superhero. I'm going to call her." He stared blankly at the list of contacts scrolling up the little screen. "As soon as I remember what her name is."

"Your cousin is a superhero, and you _can't remember her name_?"

"Well, the family doesn't really—waaugh!"

A figure had just stepped out of the shadows, some huge, half-naked dude Gotam had been too distracted to notice before. He scrambled to his feet, stumbling in his haste. Beside him, Julianne managed with more composure. Were this guy's _eyes_ glowing?

Julianne swallowed. "If you're a super-villain, could you come back, like, tomorrow? We don't even have superhero names yet."

Gotam choked on a nervous giggle. A flash of white teeth briefly lightened his craggy face. He had that not-quite-Asian look that usually mean Inuit. When he spoke, he sounded like a mountain.

"You have spirit, child. The terrigen has given you a gift with great promise. There is a place for you in Orollan."

"She can't go with you; she has finals next week," Gotam objected inanely.

"Silence, mutant. If you do not interfere, then you do not have to die."

"Seriously, who even _are_ you?" he asked.

Mister Murder-Eyes turned back to Julianne. "I am Lash. Come with me, girl, and learn what it means to be Inhuman."

Her eyes flashed. _He just had to be a condescending bastard._ "My people know quite enough of inhumanity."

Lash's jaw set. "So be it," he said, raising a clenched fist the approximate size of a wrecking ball. It was glowing, too. "The work is done. The work—"

Gotam shoved both hands out in front of him in an instinctive, useless warding gesture. It felt like he was pushing something out.

"—beginsss uhhhgh—"

It took him another precious few seconds to realise what was happening. Julianne flinched away when he reached for her, but he grabbed her shoulder and pulled her around, imparting enough momentum to get her moving and then scrambling at his phone.

"Rina, Rina, her name is Rina!" Gotam shouted, swiping hurriedly through his contacts as they ran.

"Who?" Julianne yelled back. People were staring at them.

"Super-cousin! Pick up the phone, dammit!"

"Gotam?"

"Rina, you're a superhero, right?" Gotam panted. He was so not in shape for this. Weren't superpowers supposed to come with instant muscles?

"More or less. What's wrong?"

"West got powers and a super-villain came after her and you have time powers, right? I think I have your time-powers."

There was a beat of silence as Rina absorbed that. Gotam doubled-checked to make sure the call hadn't dropped, then put the phone back to his ear. 

"Oookay. Are you guys on campus?"

"Across the street."

"First thing is, get out. Off of campus, out of the city," Rina told him.

"West, we need your car," he relayed. Then, to Rina, "Why?"

Julianne snagged him by the shirt and dragged him around a corner, swearing. Behind them, something loud and angry was happening.

"Because we are not going to let another school get blown up," Rina said grimly.

Julianne's car was a nine-year-old silver Ford Escort. Gotam started to go around to the passenger's side, then noticed Julianne had stopped. 

"Gimme a sec, super-coz. West?"

"You're going to have to drive. I'm afraid if I touch it—um."

 _Duh._ "Um. Keys are...?" Gotam's face contorted awkwardly.

"Breathe, they're in my bag, not my front pocket."

"You know what?" Gotam huffed.

He fished out the keys and they got in. "Okay," he told Rina. "We've got a car, but I don't think the guy is in time-out anymore. I'm heading east out of town; there's a national forest or something. Or there are Avengers if I go far enough, right?"

"I'll get there as fast as I can, but I don't know if that'll be fast enough," Rina said. "I think I've already called for help; now I'm supposed to try for some more; you got this for now?"

"Oh my god not at all," Gotam said. _Why the fuck is this thing a standard?_

"See, you're getting the hang of this already," Rina told him. 

The line went dead. Gotam suppressed a moan of terror and concentrated on driving as fast as possible while not getting pulled over.

 

"Ugh. That was not a pleasant experience," Angelica said.

"Your friend said time was of the essence," Nightcrawler reminded her. 

They weren't the first on the scene. Pixie had set the X-Men down on a slope overlooking a back road. Through the trees, Angelica could see where a car had pulled off onto the shoulder and been abandoned, its front doors still hanging open.

Angelica floated a few feet off the ground to get a better vantage. There was a superhuman battle in the woods on the other side of the road; automatically, she started looking for patterns, sorting out who was who, searching for friendly faces.

Northstar squinted down to where a blue streak ricocheted off trees and opponents, trailing what looked like a wake of translucent bubbles. "Isn't that a New Warrior? I thought they had all died."

Angelica looked down at him flatly.

Bobby raised raised his eyebrows. "Wow, you get really frosty for a fire-lady."

Angelica continued. "They'll have telekinesis, kinetic energy, and—I see Sil, wow, so darkforce teleportation. I'm sure Justice is in charge; he'll work with us." She could see him now, directing the battle from over the road, swaying under the force of an attack she couldn't see. Even after so long, she had to fight down the urge to fly in blasting to protect him.

"The one in red is a problem," Rachel Grey was saying. "Kaine. He used to be a super-villain; Betsy read his mind when he broke into the school with his creepy little psychic friend and tried to assassinate Wolverine."

"Not the guy who killed Doctor Octopus? The first time, I mean," Angelica clarified. _Vance, what are you doing?_

"Trust me, you don't want to know the full story." Psylocke made a face.

"And do _not_ try to read the green one's mind," Rachel added to her and Monet. They had loaded up on telepaths, flyers, and teleporters just in case they ended up having to search half of Oregon before they found Rina's cousin and his friend, but her coordinates had dropped them right on top of the fight. _Well, sure, time travel_ , Angelica thought.

"We're not here to settle grudges," Ororo said darkly. Well, at least Angelica wasn't the only one with baggage in this fight. "We work together to protect the children. To me, my X-Men!"

Around her, Storm, Monet, Rachel, Northstar, and Pixie took to the air, rising above the tree-tops. Below, Bobby wove an ice-slide through the tree-trunks. Nightcrawler simply vanished in a puff of sulphurous smoke.

 

Vance barely dodged another wind-devil from the guy with a swastika literally tattooed on his forehead. Selah was doing her best to cover him while he kept Fume from smoking them all out and destroying the visibility; but she was trying to fight opponents in the air and on the ground at the same time, and she was just too green. Meanwhile, it was all he could do to stay in the air and keep a lid on Fume.

They'd gotten here just in time. It was Lash again; he and his tribe were after East and West, whatever their names actually were. They'd been in the process of trapping Rina's cousin and his friend between their power-hitters and Fume. Robbie, Faira, and Aracely had taken the right flank; he, Selah, and Mark had taken the left; and Sil had taken Kaine upslope to complete the manoeuvre. 

This wasn't exactly the same crew they'd encountered before: there were more of them, and there had been some changes to their roster. According to Medusa, Lash had an entire settlement of Inhumans to draw from. Without Sam, the New Warriors were hard pressed to match them. 

And on top of that, there was something seriously weird going on. Rina hadn't told him what powers the new kids had, but if one of them was related to her, he might be affecting time somehow. People, punches, debris would accelerate without warning for a minute or a second, apparently completely at random. You would find yourself or your opponent moving just a little too slow. Vance had almost been blasted by a burst of energy from the other side of the fight where Mark was now charging in to the aide of Faira, who was trying to keep a lid on Lash alone. Things were getting pretty flashy over there. The discharge in question had stalled from light-speed to nothing for a full minute at least before leaping back into motion. If it had snapped back to full speed, he never would have dodged it. 

It was hell on everyone's timing. You couldn't trust that your attack or your opponent would be where you expected when you took your shot. The New Warriors were holding their ground, but one of Lash's darkforce users had still cornered East and West, wrapping the girl in shadowy chains. The ones he sent at East had all stalled and backed up, tangling.

No one else was free. Vance had been about to let go of Fume—if he had East and West, he could pull them out and call everyone else back—when Robbie, ejected again from the generalised brawl around Lash, slammed into Jack Chain and on towards Selah's opponents without slowing. 

Then the cocoon of darkness around East had melted into blazing light. Jack Chain had staggered and cried out, unable to recover before Mark trampled him, transforming on the run as he went to back up Faira. 

"Go!" Vance shouted down at East and West, pointing at the opening Sil, Selah, and Robbie had forced in Lash's line. He switched to coms. "Everybody, our new friends are breaking left. Get ready to fall back on them at my signal."

"I hear you!" Faira shouted. Kaine snarled; Mark's com still tended to fall out in dragon form. Robbie sounded off from where he'd caromed into the middle of Sil's fight; Sil's answer was interrupted by a spate of violent-sounding Mandarin. Selah flashed him a quick high sign, but in her distraction let herself be flung into the branches of an old pine when a cyclone clipped her. 

That left... "Aracely! What's your status?" Vance asked. She'd been unusually quiet, but so had her corner of the fight. 

No answer. Crap. Vance tracked Robbie's course, arcing down from uphill where Sil was still trying to get Sheath with a taser-enabled crutch, or maybe simple blunt-force trauma, and redirected him in Selah's direction after he'd knocked Chain back down. East and West weren't moving as quickly as they should have been. Could the time distortions be coming from one of Lash's people? Had they already gotten Aracely?

"Justice." It was Jake Waffles back at Wundagore. "I am seeing another force approaching your position. They are all registering as mutants."

 _The X-Men._ Great. But which X-Men? Rina would have called Angelica's team at the new school, but frankly Vance would have expected Cyclops' rogue faction coming after a couple of new mutants before Lash. Lash's interest almost had to mean that these two were Inhumans, despite Rina being a mutant. He was pretty sure she was a mutant.

Vance wasn't about to turn up his nose at help either way, but he had to admit to a feeling of relief when he saw a familiar yellow streak arrowing past. His avenging Angel.

The relief was short-lived. Angelica was, of course, heading straight for the worst problem area, where Mark, Kaine, and Faira were not having much effect against Lash and the other big Inhuman. A few good hits from her were all it would take to escalate this into something a lot more problematic. 

Gritting his teeth on a frustrated curse, Vance threw the best shield he could in front of Angelica's attack. It held, but at the expense of a ringing in his ears and a loosening of his grip on Fume. Either that gas mask he wore wasn't ornamental or he didn't really need it, because otherwise he ought to have been unconscious in there by now.

"Justice!" _Yikes._

"No-shirt's an energy convert—" Vance started to shout, but the rest of his sentence was lost as everything around him sped in a rapid blur. When he came out of it, there were X-Men everywhere. Storm was blowing away Fume's personal noxious cloud, but she wasn't the source of the gust that would have knocked him into Monet St. Croix if she hadn't been so good as to dodge him.

"That jerk is just offensive," he said, righting himself. Vance had been trying to tune out the racist boilerplate and succeeding better than Selah (of course, the guy didn't know his superheroes well enough to be calling Vance a kike), but enough was enough.

"I agree," Monet said darkly. 

"Then let's take the wind out of this airbag."

Taking on Nazi-face freed up Selah and Robbie to concentrate their efforts on the rainbow-shooting hippie (they could all look forward to Robbie doing a full week on that team-up). Psylocke had joined Sil in blocking for East and West while Northstar whisked them away. On the other side, Angelica had at least taken Vance at his word about Lash and had instead doubled back to give Nightcrawler a hand in stopping Jack Chain from joining Lash and the enormous, troll-like Inhuman whom Kaine was not—quite—managing to rip limb from limb. Nightcrawler was flickering in and out of sight, eerily like a ghost for a man recently come back from the dead. 

"Oh, my. You're a bit stabbier than the Spider-Man I'm used to," he remarked, popping out of the way as Kaine responded to a punch from troll-lady by tackling her into a tree, stingers first. Chain had to use all his projections to stop the two-hundred-year-old pine from falling on his head, leaving him open to Angelica's next attack.

"Not Spider-Man," Kaine grated out in an edged tone.

"My apologies: I've been out of circulation for a while."

"Been there."

Iceman seemed to actually be having limited success against Lash by forcing him to exert energy knocking down ice walls and not giving him anything to absorb. When he did manage to melt some, Faira flooded his sinuses with it.

When it happened, it happened fast. There was a girl's scream, a horrible sound, and three of the X-Men collapsed. Silhouette seized Psylocke as she went down on one knee, fading with her into the shadows, Rachel Grey crumpled where she'd been putting Fume to sleep, and Vance reached out hastily to catch Monet before she fell out of the air. 

All of the telepaths, Vance realised, already looking for Aracely. Last he'd seen, she'd been...down there...where the noise and the screaming were coming from.

Aracely was floating with her arms outstretched, eyes glowing brightly enough Vance could see it from here. She tilted her face up to the scudding clouds overhead, speaking in a language Vance couldn't even identify in a voice definitely not her own. 

The sinking feeling in Vance's stomach turned abruptly to...serenity. He drifted to the ground like a falling leaf, lowering Monet to rest by her downed teammate. Vance couldn't help smiling, but for some reason, he felt like there was something else he needed to do, so he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and leapt back into the air, twirling and swooping for the sheer joy of it. 

"Stop this, child. I do not know what you have done, but I will not ask you nicely again," Storm warned. 

She hovered opposite Aracely, and the air around her crackled. Tense much? Everyone else was in a much better mood. Angelica and Pixie were flying loops in the air around Selah. Vance tried a few, then caught sight of Kaine charging through the trees towards Aracely. 

Kaine! Lash's guys, whose attitudes also seemed much improved, were disappearing in flickers of darkness, but Vance was much more interested in Kaine. Kaine was great. Vance dropped down to keep pace with him as he sprang athletically from branch to branch. 

"Hey!" Vance greeted him.

"You idiot," Kaine grumbled fondly. Then, "You idiot! Get between that before it goes nuclear."

Vance took one look at Storm's face and burst out laughing. Aracely spun around like a girl in a meadow full of wildflowers.

Kaine huffed a sigh. He was probably rolling his eyes behind his mask. Pausing briefly, he webbed Robbie, who was whooping and bouncing around, and flung him in a smooth cast through the middle of the face-off. Unexpectedly, Aracely shot after him, catching him and squeezing him in a hug. 

As they settled to the ground, Vance felt his brain switch back on. _What. the. fuck?_

Automatically, he eye-checked everyone. Embarrassed and confused, mostly, but the telepaths were already sitting up and groaning. The Inhumans had gotten away; hopefully that had been a retreat and not regrouping to pursue Northstar and the kids. 

Storm was no longer poised to strike, but she was standing with her arms folded. Vance stepped down hard on his giddy inner geek, who would like it even if she stomped all over him, but also curl up and die of shame afterwards. _If you want her respect, act like a grown-up_ , he told himself firmly.

He went to Aracely first. "Hummingbird? Are you okay now?"

"It is a _beautiful_ day!" Aracely exclaimed, hugging Robbie even tighter. The next thing out of her mouth wasn't English, but at least it was identifiable. The Spanish didn't surprise Vance so much as the...French? And was that Japanese? Here pupils were dilated, but no longer glowing with eldritch light.

"Ookay. Uh, Speedball, you keep an eye on her while I sort this out."

"Vance, Vance! I can't breath—" Robbie objected. 

Vance patted him on the shoulder, marshalled himself, and turned to face the leader of the X-Men, former queen of Wakanda, and one of the most powerful and respected mutants on the planet, Ororo Munroe.

"Storm." He nodded in greeting. "Do you know if Northstar got Timeslip's cousin and his friend to safety?"

Storm, about to speak, closed her mouth and raised an eyebrow at him. Vance hoped she couldn't tell he was sweating.

"I could tell you, if my telepaths had not just been assaulted."

 _Ouch._ Priorities, but ouch. Vance switched to the control room channel. "Mister Waffles?"

"There are only two Inhuman signatures in your vicinity," Jake Waffles informed him. 

_Two?_ "Thanks. We're clear," he told Storm. "So there's that. I'm sure it wasn't Hummingbird's intention to attack the X-Men; we're not entirely certain how her powers work, and she's still getting a handle on them. We don't have any other telepaths on the team to help train her, and there's only so much I can help. Sometimes she broadcasts strong emotions. I'm not sure why she'd broadcast...giddiness; she seems to have been affected by something."

They both looked over at where Robbie was still, miraculously, failing to get a word in edgewise against Aracely.

"One of her opponents was an Inhuman we hadn't previously encountered," Vance started uncertainly.

"Um, Storm?" One of the newer X-Men, Pixie, her short pink hair mussed from all the aerial acrobatics, had slunk up and was biting her lip with an apprehensive expression on her face.

"Yes, Pixie?" Storm replied, still staring hard at Vance.

"I think I might know what's wrong with—"

"Hummingbird," Vance supplied.

"—Hummingbird. When I went over to help her—even though she broke into our school, okay?" she said with a pointed look at Vance, "—one of the Inhumans she was fighting was just a little girl, so I dusted her. But she kind of blew it into Hummingbird instead..."

"And your dust is hallucinogenic," Vance finished for her, pinching the bridge of his nose. "So what you're saying is, you got the god in Hummingbird's head stoned and it shared the trip."

Pixie's smile was halfway between an apology and a grimace. Storm looked pained. 

"An unfortunate combination of circumstances," she managed at last. "Now, if you'll excuse me...?"

"Of course. Our base is nearby; we can transport you home from there, if you like."

"Thank you, Justice."

 _She knows my name!_ Vance managed not to squeal aloud. How glad was he all her telepaths had headaches? Of course she knew who he was: Angelica would have identified the three Old Warriors (as Sam called them in retribution for all the 'Kid Nova' digs). _Calm the hell down._

Instead of wasting time being star-struck, Vance needed to be figuring out where Northstar had gone with East and West and making sure none of the New Warriors had been hurt beyond minor substance impairment.

Kaine had been hanging back to watch Aracely with concern and Robbie with suspicion; he walked over to Vance after Storm left. "What the hell?" 

"She's high on mutant pixie dust; it'll wear off soon." _I hope._

Vance looked up to see a familiar blaze of light approaching. Angelica was two steps ahead of him, supporting the young woman while Northstar carried the somewhat heftier young man. 

Everyone gathered around to listen. Unfortunately, East and West seemed more interested in arguing than explaining anything to anybody. 

It wasn't quite shock, but a lot of people dealt with a sudden influx of crazy into their lives by fixating on trivialities. This coping method also tended to fall apart with no warning and degenerate into total freak-out. Vance surveyed their combined numbers; there were enough flyers that he could carry everybody else back to the mountain easy.

"I still can't believe we ran out of gas," East was saying. 

He was a short guy in bright red jeans and a shirt with cartoon sushi printed on it. His skin was about the same shade as Rina's, and he had a lip piercing peeking out from a goatee that, if not Tony Stark calibre, was at least neatly trimmed. He might have been barrel-chested if he'd had less puppy fat and more muscle. 

"You could have checked," West said defensively, pushing her hair back out of her face. It looked like Faira's on a midnight call-out, only about three feet shorter. Her shorts and colourful tights were mud-stained, and despite not wearing any more of a heel than bulky, untied sneakers, she was almost as tall as East. 

"Did I have time to stop for gas? It's your car; why don't you ever fill it up?"

"When was the last time I drove it more than six miles?"

"Last week you—"

"Would you forget the car and explain the covey of super-villains?" Northstar interrupted.

"That Lash guy kept talking about West joining his tribe," East said.

"And?"

"I already have a tribe," West answered with surprising composure.

"Lash is an Inhuman," Vance explained. "He's building himself a power base, hostile to New Attilan and from what I can tell anyone who isn't himself."

"Charming," Storm said, no doubt picturing an Inhuman version of the Brotherhood. If only Lash were as open-minded as Magneto.

Off to one side of where most people's attention was still focussed on East and West, Angelica finally noticed Faira standing next to her and literally jumped about four inches in the air. 

"Namorita?" she exclaimed, pressing a hand over her heart.

Vance, who had been roommates with Namorita for a while, could sympathise. Faira was so exactly like her that some kind of emotional muscle-memory told your subconscious that that was Namorita standing next to you until your conscious mind remembered that Namorita was supposed to be dead.

"I. am. _not_. Namorita!" Faira yelled.

"Well, there's no need to get upset about it," Angelica said a little primly, like there wasn't an angry Atlantean with a six-inch knife and a six-foot pole-arm up in her face. "But you do look a lot like her."

Faira made a cutting gesture with her poleaxe, causing everyone else to back up several feet very quickly. "Why can you surface-dwellers not tell Atlanteans apart? Do we all look alike to you?"

Robbie and Iceman—Vance decided that they might want to seriously consider vetoing any potential superhero whose first name was Robert from now on—were immediately incapacitated by laughter. Angelica gave up and stalked away.

"Whoa," Kaine said feelingly. "I feel like I ought to warn you that I have a genetic predisposition towards redheads."

"We used to be engaged," Vance said, maybe just a little wistfully.

Kaine turned his head to look at him. "Not that I'm complaining, but what happened?"

"You know that part at the end of the engagement where you get married? That didn't happen."

Angelica was working her way around the edges of the group. As she got closer, it became apparent that she was heading towards Vance. He tried not to think about the last time she'd met the person he was dating.

"Hi," Vance said.

"Hi." 

Angelica stopped a prudent few paces back.

"So, this isn't awkward."

"Um, I guess I should introduce you two. Firestar, Scarlet Spider. Not the one we used to know," Vance clarified.

Angelica ran a hand through her hair. "Yeah, I know. He had a...run-in with the X-Men right before I joined the team."

"No one died," Kaine said. "Permanently."

 _Well, that makes things so much easier._ Vance groped uselessly for any other topic of conversation. He and Angelica were up to the occasional e-mail nowadays. E-mail was nice. It gave you a lot of time to choose your words, and the person on the other side couldn't see your face; in-person conversation was evidently pushing things.

"Robbie told me you guys were thinking about putting another team together," she offered. "How did you get Sil to come back?"

"She had to bail us out the last time we ran into Lash, actually," Vance said. 

"Oh, I thought she might be the mystery girl you've been seeing."

"You told her you were seeing a girl?" Kaine asked.

"I told her I was seeing _someone_."

"I just assumed it w—" Angelica turned to stare at Kaine. Vance could almost see the implications click quickly into place. No one had ever accused Angelica of being stupid. " _Him?_ Vance, do you know who he _is_?"

 

The silence on the way back to the base bordered on assault. Vance's conversation with his ex had gotten loud, fast. Kaine blamed the idiot he'd been cloned from for the fact that he was too stupid to stay out of it. Which had somehow led to Firestar, who seemed to be in possession of an unfortunate number of the facts about Kaine's visit to the Jean Grey School, being convinced he'd had Aracely brainwash Vance into sleeping with him. This was the problem with half-truths and all that dancing around uncomfortable topics.

Not that Annabelle had reacted spectacularly well when Kaine had told her that he was seeing someone and it wasn't her. Aracely had probably told her the rest by now. Kaine wasn't sure; he'd been avoiding Annabelle pretty dedicatedly. _Okay, no judgment._

And now he was trapped in this bubble with everyone sneaking covert glances at him, not least of whom were the insufferable teammates who he was stuck in here with. But at least it was only them; the other redhead, the one Aracely may or may not have psychically assaulted during their last encounter with the X-jerks, had scooped up ice-guy and the two new kids.

"So," Selah said at last, "that's Firestar. Wow."

"Now do you believe he's not gay?" Robbie asked.

"Maybe he's not, but I might be."

Mark looked alarmed. Maybe not all of them were morons.

They topped the ridge and the mountain came into view, fuck-ugly citadel and all. The guy had called himself the _High_ Evolutionary, after all. At least Aracely had sobered up enough to fly herself in as much of a straight line as she ever managed. 

"What is Mount Wundagore doing in Oregon?" Storm asked from where she flew beside Vance, and by extension the rest of them.

"We kicked the High Evolutionary out after he tried to M-Day the entire superhuman community a few months back."

Kaine wasn't sure what M-Day was, but from the dirty looks everyone in earshot was shooting Robbie, it wasn't the sort of holiday you put on a calendar. The comparison didn't point to good things, either.

Vance set them down on the top platform and the bay door irised open. The X-Men were understandably tense; there were a lot of unknowns (plus him) on this team, and they were on unfamiliar ground. 

Kaine fell in beside Vance. "I thought you told me your exes _weren't_ psychotic."

"A little judicious paranoia isn't out of line when you do what we do for a living; I've been mind-controlled before. I'll come up clean and that's the end of it: nothing to worry about," Vance said, a touch grimly.

"I still can't believe you're agreeing to this."

"There's a time to put principles first, and there's a time to put people first. I trust the X-Men, and being an asshole won't impress anyone."

The problem, Kaine admitted to himself, was that Firestar was obviously not over Vance. But the real problem was going to be how not over her Vance turned out to be.

 

Angelica had to admit, this was a step up from the Crash Pad. Not that that hadn't been way more than a half-finished factory; most of the seedy air had come from Rich's dirty laundry and empty take-out boxes scattered everywhere. So strange to think he was the same Nova who'd gotten himself killed fighting Thanos in the far reaches of space. 

The view from the New Warriors' team room was panoramic. Vance was probably more interested in all the sophisticated equipment packing the room. It seemed to be in the process of acquiring a familiar detritus of young superhero habitation, though. 

When Angelica brought her thoughts back into focus, Rachel, Monet, and Betsy were all waiting expectantly. God, this was embarrassing. She sounded like a pathetic, jealous shrew. But she _knew_ Vance; Vance was the best person she'd ever met. There was no way he could actually know the kinds of things Kaine had done and be—be _dating_ him. Angelica knew what it was like to be manipulated that way. It didn't matter what she sounded like; it mattered that no one was hurting Vance.

"So," Angelica said. 

"You want to ask one of us to check out your ex and see if you really did ruin him for all other women," Rachel said bluntly. 

Angelica flushed; she'd been vocal enough earlier that Rachel hardly needed to be a telepath to reach that conclusion. "Well, if you _won't_ do it, Emma Frost still owes me for trying to manipulate me into being her pet assassin when I was a teenager."

"Simma down: he volunteered; we'll take a look. Just don't blame me if you don't like what I find," she muttered under her breath. 

Everyone gathered around to watch. The X-Men might have thought Angelica was overreacting, but they were still ready to spring into action. They didn't trust Scarlet Spider and Hummingbird any more than she did.

Vance's expression was stoic as Rachel walked up to him and raised one hand, concentrating.

"Well, he's a little ticked at you. And a bit jealous that _he_ never got to be an X-Man," she reported.

"Nothing personal, dude," Bobby piped up. "We couldn't recruit you while Cyclops was here. You two would have reinforced each other."

"Of course, in hindsight, that might not have been such a bad thing," Rachel muttered.

"That's okay; I'm not really into exclusive clubs," Vance said a bit stiffly.

"Ouch," Bobby said.

Rachel lowered her arm. "Believe it or not, he's clear. Aaand I am officially out of this. Have fun, kids."

Scarlet Spider— _Kaine_ : this was the guy who'd hunted down the Scarlet Spider in order to make his life miserable, and now he was wearing the poor man's name—was glaring so hard you could tell even through the full-face mask. Angelica glanced at Rachel.

 _He's really clear, Angie. I don't like this spider-punk any more than you do, but that's the facts_ , Rachel told her privately. Angelica looked up and saw that a least Vance wasn't looking especially vindicated either.

"Can we talk?" he asked.

Angelica followed him across the hall to another lab. Her skin was crawling with embarrassment. None of this made sense.

"Well, at least now I know why you didn't want to sleep with me," she said when they were alone.

"I _wanted_ to sleep with you. I wanted to _marry_ you; _you_ got cold feet." 

This again. Why couldn't they get past this stupid argument? "You _decided_ I wasn't ready all on your own."

"You couldn't even be bothered to pick out your own wedding dress! How else was I supposed to interpret that?" 

"Fine! Maybe I wasn't ready; you're still the one who left. We could have waited—"

"Maybe, if you had said something sooner! If you didn't want to get married, then maybe you shouldn't have proposed in the first place."

Vance's face had drained of colour as soon as the words left his mouth. Silence stretched between them. He looked like he wished he could telekinetically cram them back down his throat. Well, that made two of them.

"Oh, that's great. Is that what you wish?" Angelica choked out.

"No. Angel— Angelica, look—"

She raised a hand palm-out to forestall him, shaking her head. "No. No; I should have got the message when I got cancer and never heard from you _once_."

"I was fighting a war!" Vance protested. "Norman Osborn branded us all terrorists, for heaven's sake! Or did you not look at a television or a newspaper for three months?"

"The work always did come first with you; before your health _or_ mine," she shot at him.

"Would you have preferred to be dealing with his goons on top of everything? I saw what he did to kids— _kids_ , Angel. He kidnapped, tortured, and mutilated them. What do you think he would have done to you when you were sick like that?"

Angelica balled her hands up into fists at her sides. "I thought you knew by now I don't _need_ anybody's protection."

"You can't really be accusing me of endangering you and coddling you at the same time." 

God, they had never been _like_ this. Angelica had used to love that Vance was clear-thinking and capable; he'd always made her feel so safe, so proud of him. The way he guarded his emotions had meant what he felt for her was real. They were alike that way. Both of them had been hurt. Why couldn't they stop hurting each other? 

"But you can sleep with a super-villain, apparently," Angelica said bitterly.

"He is not—" Vance began heatedly. "Look, Angel, I don't know what to say. We've had this conversation before. My life was screwed up pretty bad when I was younger; I didn't want to risk ruining what we had after everything we'd both been through. I, I wanted one good thing, you know? We were so in love and I just _knew_ we were going to be perfect, that we had a chance for something really special. And then I could feel you pulling away. Maybe it's on me; I don't know. Maybe I was thinking too much about what I wanted and I put too much on you, and you're right and I'm the one who messed it all up."

Angelica _had_ heard this before, and it broke her heart. He had wanted to give her everything. It had been like a fairy-tale, he was right; except fairy-tales never told you what happened next, how to be a wife and a superhero, maybe a mother while she was still in college. 

She'd never wanted to lose _him_ ; maybe she'd just wanted normal the way Vance wanted perfect. She'd wanted for him to always be there to hold her when she needed it, for her powers not to be killing her future so she didn't have to do everything, _be_ everything all at once. And in her clumsy attempts to control things she couldn't do anything about, she'd pushed away the one person she cared about most in the world.

"And when we ended things I realised I'd lost my chance for perfect. And—and maybe I haven't always made the best decisions dealing with that, but I've moved on."

 _Boy, has he._ "So when you said you were ready for more, you meant meaningless sex," Angelica said flatly.

"I was ready for more with _you_. Breaking _our engagement_ kind of set me back a few steps." Vance somehow managed to gentle the frustration in his own voice, but it was still there.

Angelica folded her arms and muttered grudgingly, "Yeah, okay, I guess I can see that."

Vance rubbed his forehead, shoulders slumping. "I mean, it's not like I don't _know_ that this whole thing with Kaine is—weird. Just not mind-control weird."

He took Angelica's hands. She finally met his gaze again, determined her own eyes weren't watering until she saw the unapologetic shine in his.

"It would have killed me if being married to me made you miserable," he said thickly, folding her into his arms.

Angelica let him. Patsy would call it a boyfriend-relapse and give her hell, but she let him.

"I wish I'd been ready then. I can't believe I lost you," she whispered into his shoulder.

For once, Vance was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. He just held on until Angelica was ready to let go, releasing a sigh he didn't quite suppress. 

The wetness on his cheeks reminded Angelica to wipe her own face. She couldn't help the watery laugh that bubbled up at Vance's expression when he couldn't instantly summon up a tissue for her from anywhere in the high-tech lab. 

He smiled sheepishly, then grew serious again. His voice when he spoke was soft and filled with a different kind of conviction than he had as Justice, leader of the New Warriors.

"He makes it hard to see. He's a good man, but he won't let anybody say it because he's so afraid it isn't true."

Angelica had to close her eyes for a second. "You _are_ a good man, Vance."

"I know. And so is Kaine." 

 

Vance felt wrung out after his conversation with Angelica. They had probably needed to do that for a long time, but it had still felt like getting punched repeatedly in the heart.

Nobody was even pretending not to watch them anymore. At least they were giving East and West something to think about besides their own problems. When somebody had just tried to kill you, it was usually a good idea to concentrate on something else for a while. 

"If you're all that hungry for drama, we can put on Jewel in the Palace," Vance told them. "I'm going to see if I can get through to Rina." 

He looked up at Kaine, who had attached himself to one of the thick muntins dividing the huge picture window. He'd been thoroughly surly about the mind-reading, and it wasn't like Vance couldn't see why. 

"You. I'm in love with you, so shut up," Vance said before the set of Kaine's shoulders could materialise into more commentary.

Vance turned to leave. There was a thump behind him. _Did Kaine just fall off the window?_

It took Rina another hour to get there. Vance had finally managed to get a hold of her. She didn't get cell reception when she was time-warping, but San Francisco to Portland was too far for her to manage all at once. Vance was just glad to be able to give her good news.

"So what happened? Why was that guy chasing you?" Rina asked after all the hugging and babbling and minor nervous break-downs had been gotten through. 

"Lash recruits Nuhumans, new Inhumans, for his cause," Mark said quietly. "He tried to convince me to join him once."

"He called me a mutant," Gotam volunteered. "I guess that makes sense; super-coz is a mutant."

"I woke up in one of those cocoon things," Julianne said.

Vance spoke up. "I've talked with Jake Waffles about it, he's our technical expert." Nobody even blinked at the name. God bless Portland and superheroes, he guessed. "We're actually set up for this kind of thing. The guy who built this place was a geneticist. Gotam, you _are_ a mutant; but Julianne, you're showing up as Inhuman."

"That explains Lash," Selah said. "So, what are you two going to do?"

Julianne and Gotam looked at each other. 

"We have finals," Gotam said.

"I can't leave my car in a ditch by the side of the road," Julianne said. "Also, I need gas."

"You needed gas this morning," Gotam muttered.

Monet groaned. "Not this again."

"I can help East with his time powers. They _are_ time powers?" Rina asked.

"Some kind of temporal bubbles," Robbie said. "Things were slowing down and speeding up all over the place."

"And Medusa has asked us to make sure any Nuhumans we come across know they're always welcome to call on New Attilan," Vance said. 

"Believe it or not, Vance and I have a lot of experience helping people deal with new powers, too. And we've got a teleporting mountain," Robbie added. "Really cuts down the morning commute."

"You are both welcome at the Jean Grey School as well. We are not," Storm cast Vance a hard look, "an exclusive institution."

Rina raised her eyebrows. "Oookay, while you guys deal with whatever that is, I've got to maintain my personal timeline."

Vance reached into his glove and fished out a piece of paper. "Here are the coordinates you told me to come in at and the number you called us on."

"Oh, good idea; do you have a pen?" Angelica asked.

Sil produced one from, Vance was almost certain, the shadowy crevices of the sectional, and Angelica started scribbling while Rina took herself off to a quieter corner of the big room for some quick memorisation and meditation.

"I do not understand." Faira watched her, frowning.

"Rina can...sort of move her consciousness back and forth along her timeline," Vance explained. "Last I knew she could only do it for a few minutes at a time."

"She summoned us from the future?"

Vance nodded. "From now, I guess. And her past self will be here with us while she does it."

Rina was waving him over. Vance excused himself and went.

"Do you have it all?" Since Rina didn't send her body, just her mind, she couldn't take anything physical with her. 

She nodded. "I think I'm ready. Tell me I need to answer the phone and remind me to call Firestar and the X-Men as soon as I can."

"We will," he promised.

It was mostly the old gang gathered around Rina as she slipped into her trance. For everyone they'd lost, it was good to be reminded how many of them had survived. 

Rina swayed and her eyes fluttered open. "Whoa! Where am I?"

"Mount Wundagore," Robbie told her.

Rina rubbed her forehead. "...in Europe?"

"In Oregon."

Rina looked around herself at the crowd of Warriors and former Warriors and the X-Men lurking around the X-Box. "Something bad's about to to happen, isn't it?"

"You're going to get a phone call when you go back to the past," Vance told her. "You need to take it and then call the X-Men."

"I promise we'll pick up," Angelica said. "Now-you—future-you?"

"Future," Rina supplied helpfully.

"Future-you said she'd leave you a note, but just in case, this is the number and where you told us to come."

Rina took the sheet of paper and looked it over. "Have I said congratulations on being an X-Man yet? Although, if you'd joined the team when they were in San Francisco we could have gone out for drinks."

"I will definitely stop by the next time the end of the world decides to happen on the west coast," Angelica promised. 

"Hello, teleporter, right here," Sil reminded them. "Not that the end of the world isn't a good enough reason to drink."

"I'm holding you guys to that. And remember, I've got time powers, so I can warn—" Rina's eyes unfocussed. "—my time's up. Whew. Everything still where I left it?"

Everyone glanced around the room like they'd all be able to detect causal discrepancies just by looking for them.

"Probably?" Robbie ventured.

While they were busy, Selah had located a gas station using google maps and Monet St Croix had volunteered to fly over and bring some back for West's car. Vance wasn't one hundred per cent sure she hadn't gone just to get away from Aracely; Aracely seemed _really_ happy to see the X-Men again. Vance observed their interactions uncertainly. He would at least like to be able to _correspond_ with them about her training. 

Rachel Grey and Storm had taken East and West aside to try and teach them enough of the basics to go back to campus safely. It was looking like they at least wanted to see the semester out before making any decisions. 

East and West were looking definitely glazed-over, and not just from the long lists of contact-information they'd had pressed on them, by the time Rina undertook to drive them back into town. They were going to be too deeply asleep to cause any problems on the way.

Jake Waffles, who was developing a better sense of where it was and was not appropriate to park the mountain, slid it in near the Jean Grey School but not on top of its sentient lawn. The X-Men departed more or less graciously. 

"Ugh," Selah said feelingly once everyone had gone.

"What?" Mark asked.

"I just realised I have finals, too."

They settled at last in the Bight; Kaine and Aracely could go back to Houston tomorrow. Vance needed to talk to Kaine anyway. He had been shadowing Vance silently all afternoon, lurking and watching him from the high ceilings. When Vance finally made it to his room, he followed and crouched on the wall instead of standing, a sure sign of unease. He was even still wearing his mask.

"Can you not stare at me like that?" Vance snapped at last. "If there's something you want to say, then just come out and say—"

Without warning, Kaine tackled him to the bed. Oh. _Oh._ Kaine was kissing him frantically, already pulling at their clothes. _God, yes._ Vance kissed him back, using his powers to peel off his boots and their tights.

"I love you." Vance whispered it as a promise into Kaine's ear, body to body. The knowledge thrilled through him, making his heart beat faster.

Kaine's hands clutched him tighter and Vance grazed a touch down his back, caressing. "I love you," he said again, unsurprised when Kaine rolled him under and sealed their mouths together. He was already so hard Vance was surprised he hadn't noticed earlier, even with all the skulking in the ducts. For his part, Vance had about as much blood in his brain right now as he had air in his lungs. 

The next time he found himself on top, he managed to pull away to gasp for breath. Kaine twisted to reach the nightstand drawer and pull out the lube. 

His hands were gentle, working Vance open as Vance, braced on his broad chest, worked himself back. By the time Kaine took his fingers out, Vance was more than ready for his cock, leaking precome that dripped onto Kaine's stomach. 

Kaine always felt like he was going in forever. Vance curled his hands around his ribs and opened for him, mouthing kisses onto his neck, around stubble that was starting to look more like beard. 

One of Kaine's hands came up to cup his jaw, and at its urging, Vance hopscotched over to his mouth. Slowed, Kaine's deep and often biting kisses became achingly sensual. He made them a counterpoint to his cock, which Vance was squirming on, feeling out the angle that made him lose track of everything else.

 _Too good a job._ Vance found himself on his back with only the vaguest recollection of getting there. Kaine pushed his legs wider and started pounding in until his balls were slapping Vance's ass. 

Kaine groaned into his mouth. It was his turn to grow restless under Vance's hands, running his teeth lightly over the tendons in Vance's arching neck, worrying at the already tight nubs of his nipples, and licking all the way down to curl his tongue into Vance's bellybutton. 

He thought that was impressive flexibility until Kaine curled in and licked from the base of his cock up to the crown. Vance choked, his whole body seizing up around Kaine's dick still ploughing into him. 

He braced his hands on Vance's knees and, looking up to catch Vance's eye just in case he'd had an aneurysm or something and wasn't paying attention yet, took Vance's cock in his mouth. 

The first sound he made was a sort of helpless mewl. He didn't know what to call the second, but it was a lot louder, a shout or a scream. 

Vance petted Kaine's bobbing head because his hair was too short to wind his fingers in and pull. He had no idea how long he lasted with Kaine's throat working around him and his dick driving in; long enough for his throat to feel raw as orgasm punched a last cry out of him. 

Kaine hooked Vance's knees over his arms and leaned in to press his mouth to his hip. Vance felt his last thrusts with his whole being as Kaine smothered a shout in his flesh.

After a long, still moment, Kaine dredged up the energy to crawl back up and slump into the pillows. Vance frowned through the sleepy warmth of afterglow at the extent of his bruises. Kaine hadn't given him a chance to really look at them earlier. His movements didn't seem impaired, but he had gotten thrown around a lot in the fight. Super-strength and healing-factor aside, Kaine's pain threshold was a little scary sometimes. 

Now, his arm was sneaking around Vance's waist and Vance's eyes were drooping shut, though. They could talk about it tomorrow. 

He squinted at the covers and they crept sluggishly up from the foot of the bed. Kaine let out a little sigh of appreciation as Vance switched the lights off.

"You realise, I don't get to have this." Kaine's voice was rough and low, coming out of the near shadows just as Vance was drifting off to sleep. "That's not the way the universe works. My longest relationship lasted a week and ended in madness and death. I took the hint."

"Kaine," Vance said patiently around a yawn, "I'm a mutant, I'm a convicted killer, I've been a fugitive from the federal government _twice_ , between registration and Osborn, not to mention being a founding member of the team that touched off the Civil War and the driving force behind re-forming it now. Oh, yeah, and I'm a guy. And Jewish. I don't think you have to worry about the universe going easy on us."

Vance waited for a reply, but there was only the sound of Kaine's breathing. Vance turned into his arms and went to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.  
>  _—Thomas Hardy_
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's followed the story this far. It's November now, and the next instalment, Something That Finds You, will be sending the New Warriors out into space with NaNoWriMo. Chunks of that will be going up...whenever they're ready to go up. Wish me luck!
> 
> ETA: November is over, and while I've written fifty thousand words, I haven't finished the story. I'm learning better than to start posting things before I'm finished with them, so it's still going to be a while. 
> 
> Also, if anyone's interested in alpha or beta reading, drop me a line.


End file.
